Councillor, developer complain of silent treatment from city planning staff

Michael Woods, OTTAWA CITIZEN03.14.2014

Coun. Katherine Hobbs said she’s been given the silent treatment from the city’s planning department regarding a proposed 12-storey building by Mizrahi Developments of Toronto in the months since the application was filed.

OTTAWA — An Ottawa city councillor is worried she’s been frozen out of the planning process for a proposed luxury condo building in Wellington West after the powerful chair of city council’s planning committee publicly opposed the proposal.

Coun. Katherine Hobbs said she’s been given the silent treatment from the city’s planning department regarding a proposed 12-storey building by Mizrahi Developments of Toronto in the months since the application was filed.

“I’ve heard nothing on it from the planning department at this point, and ordinarily I would,” Hobbs said. “I’m concerned about that.”

The proposed condo tower at the northeast corner of Wellington Street and Island Park Drive is three storeys higher than what the area’s community design plan, adopted in 2011, calls for on the site.

Because of this, the city’s planning committee chair Peter Hume spoke out against the application when it was filed, saying approving a tower that violates the new CDP undermines the certainty and predictability the city has been trying to establish.

But the building is widely regarded as a beautiful structure and was designed with extensive input from neighbours. The developers spent months working with the community, creating the design based on what the neighbourhood wanted.

Developer Sam Mizrahi said he’s received similar treatment from the planning department and that Hume’s comments early on “drew a line in the sand.”

“I’m always fearful of absolutes,” said Mizrahi. “When you talk in absolutes, I think it’s dangerous.

“We have to grow with the times and we have to listen with what the community and the neighbours want.”

Hobbs said she feels Hume was giving a “premature assessment” of the proposal, and fears he put planners in a tough spot.

“As elected officials, we should not be precluding a professional planner’s impartial assessment,” she said. “I don’t think Chair Hume would ever intend for that to happen, but you worry about that.”

Hume, however, said planners aren’t in a tough spot at all.

“The West Wellington planning policy framework — upon which they review the application — doesn’t support the height increases, and no one has given valid planning reason why the West Wellington policy is wrong,” he said.

“We all agree that the building is a nice design — it just should be nine and six stories — as the CDP calls for and not 12 that the developer wants. To disregard the West Wellington Planning certainty has serious consequences. It signals to the development community we are not serious about certainty and predictability and holding to the height and density in our official plan.”

In an emailed statement, Michael Mizzi, the city’s chief of development review services, said staff hadn’t yet finished evaluating the proposal and would make a recommendation to planning committee in the next month or so.

Mizrahi said the developer addressed neighbours’ concerns regarding shadowing, garbage, traffic and sidewalk widths, garnering “unprecedented” community support. It even took the unusual step of signing agreements with neighbours on particular areas of concern.

“To have so many people in support of this, in writing and vocally, I think, speaks volumes about how important this development is,” he said. “It was designed by the community, for the community. ... We wanted to create an iconic, epic development on the corner, because you get one chance at doing it right.”

Hobbs said she first told the developers there was “no way” she would support their idea unless the community was in favour after extensive consultation. The developers won her over by going above and beyond, she said, including holding a town hall, where the crowd applauded at the end.

“What happened over this year is the model of how you’d want to do community consultation,” she said.

Hobbs and Mizrahi also worry if this proposal is rejected despite the process so far, it will deter other developers from consulting extensively with the community.

“It sends a very bad message that being collaborative and being transparent and working with the community basically is a moot point, because it doesn’t matter,” Mizrahi said. “Do we really want to be sending that message out?”

However, Hume said every developer should be doing good public consultation on applications.

“If Mizrahi has set the standard, then we should applaud them and point to them as an example to follow,” he said. “Good consultation, however, is not a valid reason for disregarding the council-approved planning policies and framework.”

Past developments for the site have fallen through because of challenges such as environmental contamination. Mizrahi said part of the reason for the extra stories is because of the seven-figure cost of the cleanup.

The city has a “brownfield” subsidy programs that helps to fund such cleanups, but it’s not enough, Mizrahi said.

But Hume said that if that’s the problem, it should be dealt with by proposing to amend the brownfields policy instead of throwing out the city’s newly minted planning policy.

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Councillor, developer complain of silent treatment from city planning staff

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